Saturday, April 21, 2012

Helium is a so-called UPnP A/V ControlPoint (or as DLNA puts it, a M-DMC). It allows you to browse UPnP/DLNA media servers from your N9 and show or play its contents on a rendering device as well as offering basic playback controls on those devices.

Currently version 0.4 is available as a “beta preview”, later it will also be available for installation through the Nokia Store.

After launching Helium you will see a list of available media servers on your current network. Helium has two views, a “Server view” which you are currently in and a “Player view” which can be reached by clicking on the “Play” button in the bottom tool bar.

If you need to refresh the list of available devices because a device you believe is available but isn’t shown you can use the refresh button in the top bar to force a scan for available devices.

You can simply start browsing the server by tapping on it.

The browse view looks similar to the initial server view. You go deeper into the hierarchy by tapping on the item if it indicates that there’s more to come. You can navigate up the hierarchy by using the tool bar’s back button.

You can refresh the current listing by clicking on the refresh button in the header.

To play back an item on the selected renderer, use a long press. Unfortunately there is no haptic feed-back available yet.

The player view does not look very different from the initial server view. You can refresh the list of available devices and switch back to the server view. To select a player tap on it. Helium will then show you extended playback controls as seen in the image.

You can start and stop a playback as well as see its current progress.

If the player supports it (some may not as those actions are optional), you can also pause a playback and seek in the media by tapping on the progress bar.

You can close the extended player view by tapping on the “up arrow” right to the device’s name.